Category: Politics

‘A uniquely dangerous time?’: The aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing | The Conversation

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​Politics

The fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, has drawn widespread condemnation and renewed attention to the climate of political violence in the United States. To many, Kirk was not just another partisan commentator.

He was one of the most visible leaders of the young conservative movement. Kirk helped shape Republican politics on college campuses, in media and within President Donald Trump’s coalition.

To understand the significance of the attack — and why the reactions to it have been so strong — it helps to know who Kirk was, what the organization he built stood for, and the role he and his allies have played in national debates.

Turning Point USA founder

Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist, author and media personality who rose to prominence unusually early.

Raised in the Chicago suburbs, he made national headlines at 18 for founding Turning Point USA, a conservative youth movement. Kirk only briefly attended college. Instead, he chose to devote himself full time to conservative organizing.

That decision became central to the mythos surrounding him: He represented a choice among promising young conservatives to skip higher education in protest of the alleged left-leaning bias of universities.

Over the next decade, Kirk grew into a national figure. Beginning in 2016, he frequently spoke at Trump rallies, which helped him to build an extensive media profile.

In 2020 he published the “The MAGA Doctrine,” a bestselling book that argued in favor of nationalism and Trump’s “America First Agenda.” And his eponymous podcast – “The Charlie Kirk Show” – was downloaded more than 120 million times over the past 10 months, according to Turning Point.

Kirk’s program featured political commentary and interviews with prominent Republican personalities and politicians – guests included Tucker Carlson, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. These conversations amplified Kirk’s reach well beyond student audiences.

Connecting college students and GOP

Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 by Kirk and Bill Montgomery. Kirk met Montgomery, a retired businessman, after Kirk gave a speech at a conservative youth summit in Illinois. Montgomery urged him not to pursue college but to instead dedicate himself fully to building a youth conservative movement.

Kirk described the early days as lonely: driving to campuses, handing out flyers and trying to recruit students to talk about free markets and limited government.

Turning Point drew significant financial backing from high-profile conservative donors, including Foster Friess, the Wyoming financier; the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation; and Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein and his family foundation.

By 2024, Turning Point claimed chapters at more than 1,000 campuses, employed more than 400 staffers and had grown its annual budget to over US$8 million

Today, Turning Point is best known for hosting large-scale conferences. Its Student Action Summit in Florida regularly draws between 4,000 and 5,000 students and has featured appearances by GOP heavyweights including Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. A 2022 gathering in Phoenix, called AmericaFest, attracted more than 10,000 attendees.

Most controversially, the group’s Professor Watchlist webpage publishes the names of academics it accuses of bias against conservatives.

Turning Point has also spun off like-minded subsidiaries, including Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. These organizations expand Turning Point’s reach into electoral politics and church organizing. TPUSA’s media division produces a steady stream of popular videos, livestreams and podcasts, a legacy that should ensure Kirk’s influence lasts despite his death.

Expanding national role for Turning Point

Kirk and Turning Point provided important connections for younger conservatives and the Republican Party. In 2016, Turning Point mobilized thousands of students for Trump’s campaign, and Kirk was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.

By 2020, the organization was playing a more overt political role. Turning Point Action ran voter-registration drives in battleground states, and the group sponsored buses and advertising to bring supporters to Washington, D.C., ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally. Kirk tweeted at the time that Turning Point would be sending “80+ buses full of patriots” to the event.

While he later deleted the message and distanced himself from the violence, it underscored the group’s entanglement in the most contested moments of the Trump era.

Kirk also acted as a crucial media surrogate for Trump. He used his podcast, social media, and speaking tours to amplify Trump’s message and attack critics. He was an early and persistent promoter of Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, helping translate them for younger conservative audiences.

Spreading misinformation, inflaming tensions

Critics argued that Kirk thrived on outrage and intimidation rather than debate.

The Professor Watchlist has been denounced by faculty associations as a blacklist that chills academic freedom. Journalistic investigations by outlets such as The New Yorker raised questions about Turning Point’s finances, including allegations of blurred lines between nonprofit educational work and partisan campaigning.

Kirk was criticized for spreading misinformation, such as false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and misleading statements about COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates. He suggested that public health measures were a form of government control, rhetoric that public health experts argue undermined trust during a crisis.

More broadly, his sharp attacks on political opponents – he framed them not merely as wrong but as dangerous – drew accusations that he fueled polarization and inflamed tensions on American college campuses and beyond.

Correction: This story has been updated to give the correct state, Illinois, in which Charlie Kirk met Bill Montgomery.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, has brought renewed attention to the climate of political violence in America. Kirk’s death reflects a sizable increase in threats against officeholders and politicians at the local and federal level.

Alfonso Serrano, a politics editor at The Conversation, spoke with University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar Arie Perliger after Kirk’s shooting. Perliger studies political violence and assassinations and spoke bluntly about political polarization in the United States.

Serrano: What were your initial thoughts after Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting?

Perliger: It was a bit unusual that the attack was not against an elected official. Rarely have we seen political assassinations that are aimed at the nonprofit political landscape. Usually those people are not deemed important enough.

Secondly, and it’s something I see a lot in my research, political assassinations come in waves. We see that not only in the United States but other countries. I’ve looked at political assassinations in many democracies, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create a process of escalation that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern. That this process creates legitimization and acceptance, that it provides the sense that this is an acceptable form of political action. This will not end here.

In 2024, there were two attempts to assassinate Donald Trump. Then, in early 2025, the residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania was firebombed on Passover, and within months the U.S. witnessed the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, among other acts of political violence. The U.S., of course, is not immune to political violence, as we saw in the 1960s. But what stands out about this latest wave?

The data shows that there’s a substantial increase in the level of threats against officeholders at the local and federal level. What’s different now is we see an increased support in political violence from both sides of the political spectrum. Consistently, almost a quarter of the public is willing to support political violence in some form, or see that as a legitimate form of political action.

And as we see an increased political polarization, and the increased demonization of political rivals, we see the decline and disappearance of political discourse and policymaking. The bipartisan political process in Congress in the past few years has been almost nonexistent. And that spills over to the public, where the other (political) side is seen as a one-dimensional figure that is a threat.

We’ve had political polarization in the U.S. in the past, but usually it was around a specific issue like civil rights in the 1960s and the Vietnam War. But this time there is no specific issue that we can say, “If we solve this, we solve the political polarization.” The problem is that there’s no space for convergence from both sides where they can work together, so there’s no bridges they can rely on to come together.

Does it strike you that Kirk’s assassination occurred on a college campus? It seems as if college campuses have become a flash point of violence in the U.S.

Campuses are becoming more and more contentious spaces. They were always intellectual hubs where political views were debated intensively. Activism was always part of campus life. But what we’ve seen in the past year is that campus life has become in some cases more violent. And the fact that Kirk was killed on a campus is, I think, heartbreaking because campuses symbolize a place where you can engage in political debate in a way that encourages intellectual exploration.

What’s happened in the past year is that campuses are not those spaces anymore. Yes, we still see political activism, but it’s the activism that doesn’t leave any room for actual debate. It’s just two sides that are completely hostile to each other and unwilling to hear each other.

Trump on Wednesday night blamed the media and the “radical left” for language used to describe people like Kirk. He said this rhetoric is “responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” Any thoughts?

I agree that language and rhetoric impact people’s behavior. I’ve seen that again and again in my studies, that the discourse of political figures impacts the way people think of the legitimacy of violence. Of course, we need to understand the context here, which is that Trump himself was willing to pardon thousands of people who engaged in political violence.

So, on the one hand, I agree with him that political leaders should be responsible for how they discuss political issues. It’s important for them to convey that political discourse can be constructive. However, we need to acknowledge that our own government, in many cases, sends signals that provide encouragement and support that legitimize violence. I think it’s important for politicians on both sides to be consistent in understanding that the way they discuss their political rivals is important.

You’re an expert on the history of political assassinations. How do countries untangle themselves from waves of political violence?

Political leaders need to insist on working together. There are lots of policy areas where politicians can work together. When we see that people can work together within the political system, that sends an important message, that there is a space where we can work together. The second thing is trying to think about how the U.S. can restructure part of the political process to ensure that there is a real competition of ideas, to incentivize a constructive, productive approach that will legitimize those who are willing to engage in constructive policymaking.

Any last thoughts?

As part of my work, I track the most extremist online social media accounts, and what we see right now is a strong sense that this assassination is being celebrated by parts of the left. And that has created an escalation of language from those in the extreme right social media ecosystem. There is much more willingness to discuss issues of retaliation, an actual civil war.

And that’s my biggest worry. If you look at social media, what we see is that both sides embrace this kind of rhetoric that really concerns me. More than ever, I’ve seen calls for retaliation and a strong sense that the other side is unwilling to show any sympathy to what happened. Emotions are running very high, and I’m very worried about what may happen in the next few weeks.

Arie Perliger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a cacophony of condemnations and grief from leaders across the political spectrum. But missing from the din was the voice of a unifying political leader calling for calm.

No one appeared well positioned to play the soothing role that has fallen in the past to presidents and the nation’s faith leaders.

“I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told POLITICO.

Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape.

Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump “is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.”

Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, “But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.”

In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

But he also laid blame at the feet of the “radical left,” who he said compared Kirk to “Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.”

Trump has either actively refused or begrudginly — and then only briefly — embraced the role of consoler- or uniter-in-chief. He has routinely demonized his opponents on social media and threatened to withhold federal dollars from causes with which he ideologically disagrees. His previous rhetoric has included boasting he could stand “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters and he recently ordered the National Guard to patrol cities whose Democratic leaders he argues let crime get out of control.

For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it.

“There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,” said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

He suggested perhaps one person alone can’t fill the role of cooling the temperature.

“Does the president have a responsibility at this moment? Yes,” Barber added. “But I’m saying that in our history there has never been one person. So it’s the president, pulpits and politicians that hold key leadership positions that must step into this moment.”

Asked whether he could be the country’s lead uniter, a White House spokesperson highlighted the following portion of his Wednesday night remarks: “Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.”

And asked how he would like his supporters to respond to Kirk’s assassination, Trump told a reporter, “He was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I like to see people.”

But to another question he replied, “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”

Few know how to sew back together a civic fabric that seems irreparably torn.

“There’s no one trusted broadly enough to play that role,” said Mike Ricci, former Speaker Paul Ryan’s communications director. Ricci crafted Ryan’s remarks in the minutes after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. “And in the absence of that kind of voice, it just leaves people retreating more into their own camps: They’re more likely to share what Megyn Kelly says about it than they are the president.”

Trump still has room to seize the mantle, said Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesperson.

Back when the former president climbed a pile of rubble in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Fleischer said, “We were still a polarized nation where many Democrats thought President George Bush was an illegitimate president because of the Supreme Court ruling in the recount. What changed everything was the fact that America was attacked and our nation rallied.”

“I don’t agree that it’s impossible for leaders to bring people together, because I saw it happen,” he added.

Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel, a MAGA faithful, attended the anniversary ceremony Thursday alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an establishment Democrat, in a sign that a few moments and places remain to bridge the partisan divide.

Former presidents looked to offer their own way forward for the nation using the only megaphone they had: social media.

“Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square,” Bush said in a statement through his presidential center, and Obama posted,“This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.” Former President Bill Clinton vowed to “redouble our efforts to engage in debate passionately, yet peacefully.”

But no one can quite find the words — or the credibility or moral authority — to quell the molten anger of this American moment, an anger that shows no signs of receding ahead of the pivotal midterm elections next year.

Trump is as much an ailment to the body politic as he is a symptom. Declining trust in politicians, a fragmented and siloed media, and decades of waning social and religious institutionsare all colliding.

There’s no Rev. Billy Graham to speak to broad swaths of the faithful and call us to Americans’ better angels. The Pope — an American — hasn’t yet addressed Kirk’s death, though U.S. bishops did, urging for a national reckoning that rids “us of senseless violence once and for all.”.

“Billy Graham … spoke as someone who had something to offer to everyone, as opposed to someone who was speaking on behalf of a tribe— and that’s what we’ve lost,” said Michael Wear, Obama’s former faith outreach adviser.

At its core, Wear said, the killing of Kirk — and the lack of a unifying leader to emerge in its aftermath — reveals something about American politics in 2025.

“Politicians used to be valued by their most strident supporters for their ability to speak and persuade others who were not among their core supporters,” he said. “Now, the common definition of a good politician is someone who excels at channeling and mobilizing anger among their core supporters against an enemy.”

​Politics

Last week, during an event at the National Press Club, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore quoted a common rule for governors: “If you have not faced a tragedy,” Moore said, “just give it a second. Yours is on its way.”

Moore’s tragedy was the Key Bridge collapse last year, he said. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, sitting next to Moore, shook his head and offered his condolences. “I haven’t had to face anything quite like that,” Cox noted.

That tragedy for Cox came Wednesday afternoon, when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, thrusting Cox’s state into the national spotlight. The Utah governor offered a forceful rebuke Wednesday evening, calling it a “political assassination” and vowing justice against the killer.

But he also made an emotional plea, noting the assassination of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband in June and the attempted killings of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and President Donald Trump. “Our nation is broken,” he said, pleading that “all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans.”

Cox, the second-term Republican governor of Utah, has made such efforts at depolarization the central theme of his governorship. As chair of the National Governors Association, his initiative — “Disagree Better” — focused on building cross-aisle collaboration with blue states. He partnered with Moore and other Democratic governors on solutions to issues from teenage social media use to housing.

He is so seriously committed to the cause that after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt last year, despite years of criticizing Trump, Cox endorsed him — committing to “help (Trump) try to lower the temperature in this country,” Cox explained.

The Kirk killing Wednesday, though, posed the largest trial yet for Cox’s vision — and made Cox’s state the epicenter for the political divide he has long warned against.

“It’s going to be a challenge, but an important one, to lead out to say, ‘This is not Utah, this is not the Utah way, this is not the American way,’” said Maury Giles, CEO of Braver Angels, a New York-based nonprofit that works to bridge partisan divides.

Wednesday’s shooting occurred as the 31-year-old Kirk addressed thousands of onlookers during the first stop of a planned nationwide tour of college campuses. Kirk, sitting under a tent that read “Prove Me Wrong” and engaging in debate with ideological and political rivals, was shot in the neck midway through the event. The thousands of attendees, including children, fled in horror. Trump announced Kirk’s death later Wednesday afternoon.

In an act of caution, Utah Highway Patrol officials were dispatched to the homes of prominent Utahns in the vicinity, including former Gov. Gary Herbert, who lives near the Orem campus and has an office at the university.

“I think the jarring part was it happened in our own backyard,” Herbert, a Republican, said. “I think we expect more from ourselves than what we saw today.”

“It’s clearly not the Utah way,” added Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) on CNN on Wednesday evening.

The “Utah way,” as Cox frequently puts it, is “disagreeing better, not disagreeing less.”

Cox’s tenure as National Governors Association chair, which ended last year, carried that message to the national stage, where Cox led in forging partnerships with national nonprofits and Democratic statewide leaders.

“I just realized that we can’t solve any of the biggest issues if we all hate each other,” Cox told POLITICO last year. “And I’m deeply concerned about the polarization in our country and our inability, especially in Congress, to work together and solve problems.” To Cox, it is as much a religious effort as a political one: He credits the teachings of Russell M. Nelson, president of Cox’s faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as his inspiration.

Tami Pyfer, co-creator of the Dignity Index, a tool for analyzing the contemptuousness of political rhetoric, said Wednesday’s act of violence was “sickening” and a reminder that her mission is still very much incomplete.

“It’s discouraging to look at the work that so many bridge-building organizations are doing across the country, literally hundreds of groups addressing this problem — we’re working our hearts out,” Pyfer said, her voice breaking. “We’re working our hearts out to try to turn a corner on this.”

Pyfer, like Giles, is a Utah resident, and has worked closely with Cox on depolarization efforts. Both applauded Cox’s speech Wednesday night, as did Scott Howell, a former Democratic state senator and Utah minority leader.

“Spencer really did hit the point,” Howell said. “It would have been so easy for him to have said, ‘Democrats are the dregs of the earth’ or whatever. I give him big kudos. I really do.”

Cox’s message was one of peacemaking. “If anyone in the sound of my voice celebrated, even a little bit, at the news of the shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere,” Cox said Wednesday.

“I don’t care what his politics are,” Cox added about Kirk. “I care that he was an American.”

Herbert — who said Cox’s speech was “outstanding, considering the circumstances” — said his former lieutenant governor’s biggest challenge lies ahead.

“The question, ultimately, is how effective is what we say?” Herbert said. “How does it impact what we do?”

​Politics

In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power.

Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, named other cities run by Democrats as targets for military intervention, deployed masked and unidentifiable agents in immigration raids, explicitly threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion and used government power to persecute his perceived political enemies.

But many journalistic outlets have yet to call him what he is – an authoritarian.

As a political communication scholar, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world.

Because authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “there are no bright lines … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”

That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.

Trump’s authoritarianism

Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.”

That intensified when Trump returned to office in 2025.

Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “path to American authoritarianism” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were going worse than even he expected, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”

Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.

That was before Trump, via social media, promised to go to war in Chicago. When asked about his post, Trump said, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”

What journalists have been saying

Although other opinion journalists like Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Jonathan Chait and nearly every MSNBC anchor have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.

When Trump deployed troops to Washington, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”

A CNN analysis similarly minimized the action as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”

The New York Times’ Aug. 3 story by Peter Baker on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.

During the April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for illegally freezing federal research funding awarded to Harvard.

When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later agreed with that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration.

Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”

Competitive authoritarianism

There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.

Trump’s propensity to sue journalists, and large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.

And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the New York Times covered it, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”

But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.

Levitsky and Way have written about “competitive authoritarianism,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.

Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that elections are held, but they may not be fair. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor.

Constraining free speech

Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.

Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes,’” and CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism.

Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.

Karrin Vasby Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

President Donald Trump recently signed two executive orders targeting “cashless bail,” the policies that permit the release of people arrested for crimes pending trial without requiring them to pay money.

One executive order directs arrestees in Washington, D.C. to be “held in Federal custody to the fullest extent permissible under applicable law.” The other order calls for the withholding of federal funds to states that “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody” for many offenses.

Cashless bail does not mean that everyone is simply released unconditionally to await trial. Instead, judges have the ability to detain people who pose a specific threat to another person or the community. And they can impose conditions on those who are released, including stringent measures like electronic monitoring.

Trump has criticized cashless bail policies for threatening public safety because they can release dangerous people from detention.

As legal and criminal justice scholars, we have studied bail reforms across the United States.

We have found that jurisdictions that reduce reliance on cash bail can maintain public safety. And they can also curtail mass pretrial incarceration that overwhelmingly locks up people who are too poor to afford bail. That includes three jurisdictions that we examine in detail below: Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Illinois.

The rise of bail bonds

Bail is a promise by an accused person to show up at court hearings in exchange for being released from custody pending the resolution of criminal charges.

In many U.S. jurisdictions, however, people pledge money or property as collateral for their pretrial release. But some people are released unconditionally, referred to as release on their own recognizance. Others are denied pretrial release altogether because they pose a risk of flight, a risk of failing to appear, or pose a danger to the community.

Historically, the bail system worked on promises and one’s reputation, not money. Money bail became more common around the turn of the 20th century with the rise of commercial bail bonds, in which a bail bond business would front the bail money, charging the arrestee a portion of the bail amount as a fee.

This created a system in which people with money could buy their pretrial freedom for many crimes – even serious felonies. Conversely, between 60% and 90% of people remained jailed despite the availability of bail bonds. This was not because they were dangerous, but because they lacked the financial resources to come up with the 10% of their bail amount to purchase their pretrial freedom.

The problems with cash bail

On any given day, approximately 664,000 people are locked up in jails in the United States. Only about 30% of these people are serving sentences following criminal convictions. The remaining 70% in jail are awaiting trial.

Typically, this is not because a court has judged them a risk to public safety. And usually it’s not because a judge decided they are unlikely to appear at scheduled court hearings.

Instead, they remain in jail because they cannot pay the money bail that has been set in their cases. This can have serious or even tragic consequences, such as lost homes and jobs, and even suicides. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death in jails, and pretrial detainees are six times more likely to die by suicide than those serving jail time after convictions.

A 2012 study in New York City found that “even when bail is set comparatively low – at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases – only 15% of defendants are able to come up with the money to avoid jail.” In 2017, the jailing of people who could not afford bail cost taxpayers US$38 million each day – an amount that exceeds $50 million today, adjusted for inflation.

And it has allowed commercial bail businesses – and the nine insurance companies that back the roughly 30 corporations that underwrite more than $14 billion in bail bonds issued each year – to earn profits in excess of $2.4 billion annually.

Conversely, money bail systems allow people with financial means, even those who might be dangerous or pose a genuine risk of flight, to be released because they can afford to post bail.

Bail reform in Washington

Washington abolished cash bail in the early 1990s. The city replaced it with a system that overwhelmingly pairs pretrial release with levels of supervision tied to the risk that a court determines a defendant might pose. As a result, roughly 87% of all people arrested in Washington are released pending trial without needing to pay or pledge any money.

Despite the lack of money bail, the city has experienced high court appearance rates and low reoffending rates. Between 2019 and 2024, 89% of defendants awaiting trial in the city showed up to their scheduled court appearances – and 90% remained arrest-free. Even among those accused of violent offenses, 98% were not rearrested for violent crimes while on pretrial release.

Washington shows that when people are given the tools and reminders they need, they are overwhelmingly likely to comply with court obligations. That includes phone calls, text messages and email reminders about court dates or access to pretrial services. Moreover, these results illustrate that alternatives to cash bail can function effectively, without compromising public safety.

The Illinois and New Jersey experiences

New Jersey overhauled its bail system
in 2017 by virtually eliminating cash bail. The state replaced it with a framework that relies on judicial assessments and pretrial monitoring to decide whether defendants should be detained or released.

Within two years of New Jersey’s bail reforms, the state’s pretrial jail population decreased by roughly 44%. Most notably, the state did this by reducing the number of defendants held in jail for more than a day or two.

This reduction was not accompanied by an increase in failures to appear in court or in new criminal charges.

A recent Drexel University–Boston University study echoed those findings, confirming that the decline in incarceration came without increases in gun violence. The study also found that the number of people held on low bail amounts – $2,500 or less – fell sharply, from more than 12% of the jail population in 2012 to just 0.4% by 2021.

Early data analyses after Illinois eliminated cash bail in September 2023 show that jail populations declined with no uptick in failure-to-appear rates.

Further, violent crime and property crime rates in Cook County have decreased since the law took effect, including a 15% reduction in Chicago.

Broader considerations

In 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, analyzed data from 33 cities, comparing 22 that had enacted bail reforms with 11 that had not. The researchers found that there was no relationship between bail reform and crime rates. When combined with the data from Washington, New Jersey and Illinois, it seems clear that jurisdictions can protect public safety while also reducing unnecessary and harmful pretrial detention.

In New Jersey, for example, thousands of people – many from communities of color – were able to remain employed and housed while awaiting trial. Rather than destabilizing people’s lives by unnecessary incarceration, the state contributed to greater stability for them, their families and communities.

The question moving forward is how to build on these successes.

As policymakers consider next steps, these empirically supported results can provide guidance. They provide evidence that cashless bail is not a threat but an opportunity for fairer, smarter justice.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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